Shooting Miniatures *NEED ADVICE/TIPS*

Have a commercial shoot coming up next week that involves shooting a game of chess. Director wants the chess set to appear as if its in a large room and the board and pieces are 2-3ft tall. I've done quite a bit of research regarding DOF being very important when shooting scaled objects.

Does anyone have any advice/ tips as to what I can do differently, avoid, ect???

My Plan:

They are building a custom chess set/board that will be slightly larger than a normal set. The set will be on a table top that is the exact dimension as the board.

-I suggested to build 3 wall flats that will sit about 5-6ft back from the chess table (the walls will be movable so we can adjust accordingly) The walls will be 4ft wide and 6ft tall.

-I will be lighting mostly from overhead with a few sources from the sides.

-there will be a slight haze over set.

-a hand model will be moving the pieces as we go through the scenes. the shots will be a mix of closeups, slo mo, overhead, sweeps.

I will be shooting on a RED EPIC. I thought it best to have the camera on a Chapman Dolly the entire day to save time of setups.

My Questions:

-What is the best way to approach lens choices for shooting miniatures?

-How much light do we really need if I plan on shooting at say an f16 (Is there correct math for choosing the best aperture when shooting miniatures to get the correct DOF?)

-Will the walls act as a proper background for this project, making it feel as if we are in a giant room?

However, these days one sees a lot of photography where normal sized scenes are given very short depth of field.

The potential problem you'll have is that a chessboard will be understood, by default, as small. With a minature building, on the other hand, it is by default, understood as large, so the only problem you'd have shooting a miniature building is ensuring some consitency with what photography of a normal building might look like.

But what would photography of a chessboard normally look like? Normally it will look like the chessboard is small. So you'd need something other just DOF to suggest it is large. Is the hand going to be large as well? What is left to suggest in any way the chessboard is oversize? Or even meant to be oversized? Especially when it isn't.

You need something else in the scene to suggest the chessboard is oversized - or reciprically, that whatever else is in the scene has shrunk.

You'd want to stop down as much as possible, f/16, f/22, etc. The other thing is to get the camera into a position that doesn't seem high in the air if these chess pieces are supposed to be huge. This can mean using things like Innovision probe lenses and snorkels to get the lens down to the table top.